


It's Time, Harvey

by Nygmatech



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Injury, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Nightmares, Not Sure How To Tag This Really Ahahaha Lmao, OSDD, hospital mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27654304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nygmatech/pseuds/Nygmatech
Summary: Harvey Dent flits in and out of consciousness in the harrowing few hours after his tragic incident, coming face to face with a part of himself he can no longer keep running from.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	It's Time, Harvey

**Author's Note:**

> Not even gonna lie, folks, I'm working through some major shit and wrote this to deal with it. I kept the details of Dent's attack and attacker Intentionally Vague because it changes across so many continuities (though I'm also over here just making blatant BTAS references everywhere ope). No cute romance in this one, sorry about that!

The last thing Harvey Dent felt before everything went dark was searing, blistering pain. Too much to bear, he could sense every layer of his skin peeling back as the acidic chemicals ate away at each cell in their path before sending the man into shock. 

The last voice he heard, he could have sworn was that of his old friend’s. Reliable Bruce, always there...only this time, he wasn’t. Just the despicable mobster bastard who called the shots, his disorderly posse of lowlife criminal scum, and Batman, who had waited too long to make any difference. Harvey Dent, District Attorney was certainly to be no more. He was sure he was going to die, that his fading out to nothingness would be his final seconds on earth and his first step into oblivion. He wasn’t an actively religious man, but in that moment, he prayed for forgiveness. He had no idea what he needed to be forgiven for.

In the murky depths, time was a haze. There was nothing, just Harvey, floating in an endless void, dead silent until a voice called out to him from the distance. It was deep, scratchy, and uncomfortably familiar.

_ “Harvey Dent...” _

Another nightmare, or was it? Was he still alive, or was this meant to be a cruel excuse for his personal afterlife? He tried to speak, but his lips felt like TV static. The words he desperately tried to formulate clogged up in his throat, rendering him unable to protest that voice that increasingly haunted him in the far reaches of his conscience over the years. Raising his hand to touch his face, his fingers couldn’t detect a thing; he couldn’t even conceptualize it. Pathetically grasping at air in a panic, he stared ahead into the void. Harvey still saw nothing, and yet the voice spoke again, clear as day, as if it came from within his skull.

“You're not safe, Harvey.”

\---

A crack of thunder abruptly jolted Harvey awake. The bright, sickly glow of artificial fluorescent light filled one eye. The other was covered, or perhaps gone, but there was no way he could know. The entirety of his face felt completely numb. As he came to, he could see the details in the ceiling, his vision gradually coming into focus while the fuzzy sound of the rain against the window became discernable as individual splattering of water droplets on glass. He was most definitely alive, there was no denying that, but the man could hardly remember where he even was before this. All he could remember was that excruciating, relentless agony that came back to him in a flash as soon as it crossed his mind.

Harvey screamed, alerting the nurse in the room. She scrambled over to the side of Harvey’s bed, swiftly replacing an IV bag with expert skill. The drip in his arm felt cold, but the numbness eventually returned, even in his memory. 

“There you go, Mr. Dent. Is that better?” she asked, her soft voice calm and comforting.

“Mh..mhmmmm,” Harvey mumbled, his jaw barely budging as he struggled to even make a sound.

“That’s good to hear," the nurse stated. "We’re doing our best to monitor your condition, but please let me know if you notice any more sharp pain.”

Harvey made a similar sound while the nurse walked back to the corner of the room, keeping a close eye on the screens hooked up to the man. His eyelid grew heavy as the painkillers and sedatives did their job, gently carrying the recovering man back into a slumber.

\---

Harvey found himself in a courtroom, one somewhat larger than it should be. The walls all slanted slightly inwards, just enough to seem uncanny to the former district attorney. He stood face to face with a duplicate of himself. It was like looking in a mirror, though half of his visage was fuzzy and indeterminate, amorphous and unstable. The reflection idly flicked a coin in the air, catching it effortlessly before repeating the action.

Harvey noticed his palms beginning to sweat. “You again!? Haven’t I told you I want no part of you!”

Tilting his head and folding his arms across his chest, the reflection spoke. “Too bad.  _ I’m _ part of  _ you _ . I don’t want to hurt you, Harvey.” 

“Then what the hell do you want with me?” Harvey shouted. “Why do you keep doing this to me?”

“It’s the only way you’ll ever listen to me, at least since they started telling you that we were being ‘bad’ when we were young.” He growled, the lights in the distorted courtroom dimming in response to his narrowing eyes. “You’re  _ angry _ , Harvey. I can feel it. We both are.”

“What do you want?  _ Spit it out! _ ” Harvey’s heart pounded in his chest.

“I have tried to tell you this for years, Harvey,” the reflection sneered. “I kept trying to defend you, and you kept pushing me away. This time, I couldn’t save your ass. Playing by the rules is only gonna get you hurt again. I won't let you get hurt again, and this time, we can get back at the bastards who did this to you. To us.”

Harvey grew exasperated, the black and white checkered tile floor beginning to destabilize under his feet. “Did _ what? _ Did what to us?”

A wide grin crossed the reflection’s face while the look in his eye remained cold with determined anger. He tossed his coin across the room and into Harvey's hands. Looking down, Harvey realized it was his beloved two-headed coin, the very one he had owned since he was a child, now deeply scratched and irreparably damaged on one side.

A disproportionate feeling of grief filled the pit of Harvey’s stomach, his eyes fixating on the coin as the world slowly fell away from around him. Once again in the darkness, he slowly ran his thumb across the surface, tears welling in his eyes and rage building in his throat.

The reflection remained where he stood, allowing Harvey his moment before speaking again. “C’mon, you can’t bear this fucking pain alone. Let me fight for you. Like the old days.” 

Despite not knowing why he was experiencing this level of despair, Harvey was still overcome with emotion. He held the coin to his chest, sobbing as if he had just lost a loved one. The reflection walked over to him, placing a steady hand on his shoulder.

_ “It’s time. Harvey. It’s time.” _

\---

When Harvey Dent opened his eyes and stared up at the speckled drop ceiling, nothing seemed to have changed. The rain was still pounding, the nurse was still intently watching the monitors, and the cold drip of the IV continued to flow, but the man in the hospital bed was no longer the same man that woke up before. The pain in his face began to return, those raw, singed nerve endings screaming for relief, but all Harvey did was clench his teeth and silently endure the agony. He wanted that pain to be fresh in his mind. Forgetting it when he left the hospital would be a grave mistake. 

After all, he couldn’t allow himself to be harmed, not again.


End file.
